No Cure for Cancer

Every few days we see a story about a new treatment that is a promising cure for some disease or halts aging. These aren't from tabloid newspapers or websites. These are from respected scientific publications.

So if all these "breakthroughs" keep occurring, where are the results? I'm not mad, I'm just curious.

I guess things like "'Stress' protein could halt aging process, say scientists" make good headlines, but "nope, that didn't work!" does not. So we never hear when a new treatment or theory doesn't pan out.

I do wish the journals or publications would keep us updated on these. That way I'll know when I can start smoking again.

Why is Printer Ink so Expensive?

HP attempts to justify the (absorbantly) high cost of inkjet ink.

They fail miserably. So badly in fact, that it just looks like their hiding something, like heavy mark-ups.

IBM: We Now Own Commerce

IBM to buy Sterling Commerce

If you're not familiar with Sterling Commerce, this won't be a big deal to you. If you are, this is HUGE.

Sterling is one of the world's big EDI companies. They do business with literally anyone who does EDI. Frankly, I'm surprised AT&T sold it. Now, as you can imagine, this has big implications for anyone working with Sterling.

I was with a company that used Cognos, and when IBM bought them (and began changing everything around) the company I worked for did their best to get away from Cognos due to all the changes. Guess what? They also use Sterling. I'm guessing their going to have to try to do something else for that as well.

Kindle for Android This Summer

Reading books is probably the most used function of my Android phone. I've got two different book readers on there now. Mostly I stick to public license books, but I've also purchased a couple. The problem is getting the free book readers to recognize the books I've purchased. It's doable, but it's kind of a pain once I get them transferred to the phone.

I'm pleased to see that Amazon will be offering their Kindle app for the Android market this summer. The app has been available for iPhones and iPads for a while.

The big news: you’ll be able to buy books right from Android devices.

For anyone who has used the Kindle app on the iPhone or iPad, not being able to do that is one of the big annoyances. If you want to buy anything, you’re kicked out of the app, back to the web, to make the purchase.

Yes, it’s silly. But both sides likely put up with it for their own reasons. From Apple’s perspective, the Kindle Store directly competes with its own iBookstore. From Amazon’s perspective, there’s no way they’d pay Apple a 30% commission to sell their titles as in-app purchases.

Android doesn’t present those issues.

Via Techcrunch

My Space is Closed

Does anyone actually use MySpace anymore? I know I shut down my site last year after a recruiter found it and told me "it didn't reflect well", whatever that means. That wasn't the entire reason I shut it down though.

One, I never looked at it and as far as I could tell, very few others did as well.
Two, MySpace is so eaten up with spammers and malware that it's dangerous just to look around.
Three, everyone seems to have migrated over to Facebook.

Whatever. I still have my blog listed on my resume. It may not reflect a corporate mentatiliy, but it's a (mostly) family friendly environment, and I talk about tech issues (and anything else that grabs my attention). On the whole, I've gotten more positive feedback than negative.

I guess that's all anyone can ask.

Build It Better

"Steve Huffman, co-founder of social news site Reddit, gave an excellent presentation (slides, transcript) on the lessons he learned while building and growing Reddit to 7.5 million users per month, 270 million page views per month, and 20+ database servers."

Awesome article with a couple of surprises. Screw database normaliztion! Wow, the ways they're achieving that volume would never have occurred to me.

Motion Induced Blindness

Creepy, especially if you think of this happening while you're driving.

I Always Suspected

And This is Why I Don't Use Bing

That Hurts More Than Just Pride

Volvo shows how to not demonstrate their auto-breaking feature (though the name might well be appropriate).



via TechEBlog

Gravitationaly Attractive

Three spacecraft flying three million miles apart are to fire laser beams at each other across the emptiness of space in a bid to finally prove whether a theory proposed by Albert Einstein is correct.

"Gravitational waves are the last piece of Einstein's theory of general relativity that has still to be proved correct."

Gravity is such a weak molecular force, I can see why they need to use this extreme method to test. I wish them the best of luck with it. It seems the more we find out about the universe, the more it seems Einstein was correct.

Get Your Very Own Netbook for $1200

Yep, why spend $300 on a netbook when you can buy the same thing for $1200? Because it doesn't say Apple on the case, that's why.

ClamCase iPad case magically turns your tablet into a laptop

Save your money people. Don't buy the over-sized iPod Touch. And if you're an Apple fanboy, piss off. I've had exactly enough of you sheeple.

Bad Things Man

New Technology Allows Drivers to Steer Car With Their Eyes By Kurt Black

Absolutely no good can come of this. One blonde in a convertible and there's a major pile-up. Nope, no good at all.

Quite Possibly the Most Disturbing Thing You'll See Today

This really creeps me out. It's called the Face Bank, and of course, it's a Japanese invention.

Crash Course

Scientists Explain Why Computers Crash But We Don't via Physorg.com

In other words, we're doing it wrong. But maybe this isn't such a bad thing, otherwise our computer overlords would've taken over long ago.

Not Playing By the Rules

Apple facing anti-trust inquiry over their new policy of requiring software developers who devise applications for devices such as the iPhone and iPad to use only Apple's programming tools.

Sauce for the goose, Mr. Saavik.

Humorous Intent

In a case of absolute irony, Microsoft teaches professionals humor.

If you've never dealt with a Microsoft representative (Micro-serfs), you should know that humor simply isn't in their toolbag. Don't believe me? Call their helpline sometime.

Then again, considering Vista, maybe they're developing a sense of humor.

I'm Sure This Comes as a Surprise to No One

Japan sending a humanoid robot to the moon

I just wonder if it will be one of the human-looking, sex-crazed girl-bots or a super-sized transformer type.

If You Don't Know About This...

...You might want to look into it.

Google “Massachusetts data security law, 201 CMR 17.00” and you’ll find plenty of facts about the new law. I also encourage you to read InformationWeek’s "States' Rights Come to Security Forefront: Massachusetts' new data protection law reaches beyond its borders. Are you ready?" It’s one of the best summaries I’ve seen. But even it falls short of helping you understand the profound impact of this law.

Here are the basics of the new law. If you have personally identifiable information (PII) about a Massachusetts resident, such as a first and last name, then you have to encrypt that data on the wire and as it’s persisted. Sending PII over HTTP instead of HTTPS? That’s a big no no. Storing the name of a customer in SQL Server without the data being encrypted? No way, Jose. You’ll get a fine of $5,000 per breach or lost record. If you have a database that contains 1,000 names of Massachusetts residents and lose it without the data being encrypted that’s $5,000,000. Yikes.

So if you or your company carries any PII for ANY Massachussetts resident, you may want to check into your encryption for your databases (and of course websites). Also, be sure to read further down for information concerning laptops in MA. Ouch!

That's a Spicy Meatball

So what do you do with the world's largest laser? You try to jump start your own mini-star right on the surface of the Earth.

Not that I don't trust them or anything, but I'm glad they're conducting this experiment on the other side of the country.